You’re an addict.
JANUARY 7TH, 2016 — POST 003
Addiction ruins lives. Addiction is a destroyer of selves, of relationships, of wallets, homes, ambitions. You’d have a hard time disagreeing with me on this. But you’re probably thinking of substance addiction. You’ve probably been affected in some way by substance addiction but, hopefully, you’re not addicted. But there’s an epidemic of addiction that I can all but guarantee you too are dealing with right now. I know this because entire industries are built on this fact.
You’re addicted to novelty.
The first weeks of January are awash with ‘Best’ lists of the entertainment products of the previous year. We share a moment of reflection on the TV we’ve watched, the games we’ve played, the podcasts we’ve listened to. The one I enjoyed the most was The Besties: a podcast by two current and two former Polygon staffers — Griffin and Justin McElroy (current), and Chris Plante and Russ Frushtick (former) — as they whittle down a list of 12 games to a single which will be minted as Game Of The Year 2015. The closer they got to that final game, the more the four questioned the validity of such a practice, in no certain terms concluding that the sheer diversity of experiences these games offer makes the possibility of comparison less and less meaningful.
Steam alone had over 1500 titles added in the first 7 months of 2015. It is because of this volume that there can be so many divergent experiences within the same medium. TV is going through a similar moment, leading some to claim that the landscape has reached saturation point. And whilst these cries of “Enough already!” aren’t uncommon, the same breath that spoke ‘Best Of 2015’ also speaks ‘Most Anticipated Of 2016’. As just an example, innumerable news sites were running stories about The Force Awakens and Rogue One simultaneously.
But something stopped me from clicking on those 2016 listicles. I don’t know why but instead I decided to listen back to The Besties from 2013, an episode I eagerly consumed when it was first published. 3 hours, over two parts, about the best games of two years ago. I thought I was listening just to enjoy the comedic chemistry of the four hosts in a mindless kind of way whilst I browsed Reddit but I soon realised there was a whole lot more here. Specifically, 12 games my addiction to novelty had forced me to forget.
It is in the best interest of the industry for me to forget.
The necessity of novelty is uniquely manifest in the games industry, however. Whilst 2013 was one of the industry’s strongest in recent years, it was also the end of the last console generation. The sale of new hardware was leveraged in service of the forgetting of unforgettable titles such as Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V. Those ‘Best Of 2013’ quickly lose any sense of recency due to their incompatibility with either the Xbox One or PS4. They’re conveniently cordoned off as ‘past’. This specialist hardware requirement of (console) gaming, provides the richest foundation upon which novelty addiction can be built.
I‘m addicted to novelty.
But I just needed to see that.
The first stage in overcoming addiction is acknowledging you have a problem. Booting up an old game is a perfect second step to recovery.
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